The small Jewish community of Murmansk numbers only a few hundred and does not have a synagogue. The ceremony for the seven boys and girls was organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel in St. Petersburg.

Bar Mitzvahs are not often organized in Murmansk. Jewish teenagers in the city were uncertain whether it was accepted practice to celebrate their bat or bar mitzvah once they had passed the ages of 12 or 13, but after they had read in the media that the chairperson of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky, had celebrated his own bar mitzvah at age 65, they asked the Jewish Agency to organize a ceremony for the city’s Jewish youth, the agency’s web site reads.